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In the YouTube web series Ask a Slave, the creator Azie Dungey comically portrays a slave living on George Washington’s plantation in the late 18th century. Using her historical knowledge of the time period, and an extremely dry wit, she sarcastically answers real questions posed to her by individuals she encountered while working as an historical reenactor at Mt. Vernon. Azie, under the alias of the slave Lizzie Mae, admirably illustrates with humor the shocking lack of knowledge that many Americans possess about early American history.
Dungey’s video really highlights a collective ignorance in America about slavery in the United States. Many of the questions posed to Azie where simply shocking to me. Some of the more outrageous questions and statements included the following: “Slavery wasn’t that bad!,” “Do you have any white friends?,” and “What does George Washington think about Abraham Lincoln freeing all of his slaves?” In my opinion, the questions posed to Azie are just absurd. Moreover, It’s disconcerting to me that people would still think that “slavery isn’t that bad,” particularly because it still exists as an underground institution in today’s society. I found myself wishing that the person who made this statement could face the conditions that early slaves did, if only for a couple of days. Perhaps this would allow them to see what a deplorable, degrading, and dehumanizing practice slavery is.
I feel as if the author of the post Ask a Slave’s Critique of the American Education System made an extremely important point when stating that we cannot let Azie’s message get lost in her humor. Azie’s comedic influence in her work is certainly valuable. It makes her videos more accessible and interesting to her audience, and I feel it is a major factor in why they have achieved such recognition and success. However, it’s all too easy to allow ourselves to just take that humor at face value, instead of looking past it and trying to understand why Azie actually made these videos. I don’t think Azie is just making her videos because these questions are ridiculous or funny. She’s purposely illustrating a rather shocking and sad ignorance about our nation’s history among the general populace
Overall, I feel as if Ask a Slave is an important web series. Dungey’s videos are witty, sarcastic, and supremely funny. More important, however, is the fact that they highlight a real lack of knowledge about the early history of the United States. I feel that we as Americans have a responsibility to learn about the history of our country. While this country is certainly one of the greatest on this earth, many mistakes were made along the way to reach the point where we are now. It’s important to learn about them. We don’t want them to happen again.